Ted Cruz-The Reincarnation Of Joe McCarthy?

Rick Ungar
, ContributorI write from the left on politics and policy.Opinions expressed by Forbes Contributors are their own.

(Image credit: AFP/Getty Images via @daylife)

For a politician seeking power at any cost, there are few tricks in the handbook more effective than the employment of innuendo, false implication and guilt by association—tricks that were once perfected to devastating effect by Joseph McCarthy, the Wisconsin senator who rose to extraordinary power through his mastery of these dark arts as he led the United States down the path to one of its darkest hours.

McCarthy learned the value of the half-truth and innuendo early on in his career.

In his first political campaign for a seat as a circuit county judge, McCarthy published campaign literature falsely claiming that his opponent was 73, senile and guilty of financial corruption—despite knowing that the gentleman was 66, in full control of his mental faculties and had never done anything that had so much as a whiff of corruption.

But it worked.

Indeed, it worked so well that during McCarthy’s next campaign, which was a primary race for his party’s nomination to run for the U.S. Senate, McCarthy perfected the science of dirty politics by moving away from the complete and total lie and into the more subtle art of innuendo and half-truths as he attacked his opponent, Robert La Follette, for not enlisting in the war effort during World War II.

McCarthy was technically correct, as La Follette was already 46 when Pearl Harbor was bombed and far too old to be accepted into the U.S. armed forces. McCarthy, of course, didn’t bother to mention that detail and the misdirection took a toll. McCarthy would go on to allege that La Follette had made huge profits—suggesting by implication that the man had been guilty of war profiteering—while Joe was out there fighting the war. Again, it was true that La Follette had made money during the war, however it was certainly not from war profiteering but rather from a local radio station in which he had invested.

Joseph Raymond McCarthy. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Again, McCarthy’s low tactics worked as he eked out a narrow victory. La Follette went away from the race deeply injured by the attacks on his reputation—attacks that were believed by many despite being wholly untrue— and eventually committed suicide.

McCarthy never looked back as the smear tactics employed during his campaigns would pale in comparison to what he would do when applying his despicable brand of politics to what we would come to know as “McCarthyism”—the use of the smear against fellow Americans whom he sought to paint as Communists, destroying the lives of innocents to further the fortunes of Joe McCarthy.

Another skilled practitioner of the half-truth and innuendo was Richard M. Nixon. And while a review of Nixon’s proclivity for successfully employing the darkest side of politics as the means to win elections and defeat his political opponents is another story for another time, we all know where this approach to power led for Senator McCarthy and President Nixon—an eventual ticket to disgrace and political demise.

Newly minted Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) would do well to learn the lessons of these predecessors as he embarks on his own public career, one he has apparently chosen to build using the dark political arts of innuendo and smear.